STOP! Junk Mail

[Colin James]

Royal Mail is the single largest deliverer of unaddressed junk mail in the UK; roughly one in four leaflets is pushed through the letter box by the postman.

The opt-out form Royal Mail will send you can be found here:

 

Opt Out Application.pdf

 

Please note that filling out and sending this form will not speed up the process of opting out. Royal Mail will simply send you a new form to complete – just one example of how needlessly complicated the opt-out process currently is.

After you have completed the form Royal Mail will post to you, your postman should stop delivering unaddressed items within six weeks.

 

Alternatively, you can send an e-mail or write to Royal Mail yourself:

• optout@royalmail.com
  
• Freepost RRBT-ZBXB-TTTS
  Door to Door Opt Outs
  Royal Mail
  Kingsmead House
  Oxpens Road
  OXFORD
  OX1 1RX
  

Consequences of opt out

 

At the moment, Royal Mail is allowed to deliver three unaddressed items per household per week (a limitation that is likely to be scrapped). The main consequence of opting out is therefore that 150+ fewer leaflets per annum will be pushed through your letter box.

It should be noted, however, that according to Royal Mail many of the 150+ items are unlikely to be unwanted. The opt-out form therefore warns you that if you decide to opt out, you may miss 'important information from local and national Government'. Our advice is to simply ignore this warning. It is unlikely that important information is ever sent using the door-to-door scheme, if only because more and more people are opting out. If local or national Government has something important to tell you, for instance about elections, they will make sure that the information is widely available. Door-to-door leaflets are just one of many ways in which local and national Government can communicate.

[M. Preece]

Good post, I seem to spend an hour a month going thru junk mail, I have just emailed them and already had a reply so thanks for the details.